Aligning up against Microsoft

Cuba and India are the latest countries to vote against Microsoft’s Office Open XML (OOXML) file format being adopted by the International Standards Organisation (ISO) and the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC).

Meanwhile Germany and the US confirmed that they won't be backing down on their call for the format to be ISO/IEC-approved.

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The decisions from national delegates from 33 countries who took part in the DIS29500 ballot resolution meeting in Geneva in late February have been trickling in ahead of this Saturday’s crucial deadline.

Late last week India overwhelmingly rejected OOXML. Of the nineteen companies in the country submitting a vote, which included ODF supporters IBM, Sun Microsystems and Red Hat, only five came out in favour of adopting it as an ISO standard, according to the Economic Times.

Meanwhile, Cuba said it won’t be backing Microsoft’s file format this time around.

Representatives of the Cuban National Bureau of Standards have also claimed, according to an email seen by Groklaw, that Cuba had in fact voted against OOXML in September, suggesting that their votes had been miscounted in the original Geneva ballot. This claim hasn't been verified elsewhere.

Microsoft, which previously failed to secure enough votes in September last year, has been hoping to push OOXML through as an international standard with its second attempt.

Delegates who voted in the original fast-track ballot have been given until 29 March to change their position on the Office 2007 format should they wish to do so.

If enough of the 87 national member bodies reconsider their original vote then the format could proceed to publication alongside Open Document Format (ODF), which gained ISO approval last year.

But if Microsoft fails to secure enough votes this time around the standardisation proposal will be thrown out and the fast-track procedure will be axed. ®